


Sign

by mrhiddles



Series: Tumblr Fic Prompts [7]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Funny, Happy, I have no idea how to tag this woops, M/M, One Shot, Sign Language, Tumblr Prompt, Uncle Thor (Marvel), Uncle-Niece Relationship, it's cute okay, like a salt bae sprinkle of angst, super mild angst though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 00:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17538899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: Thor hasn't seen his brother for thirteen years. Then Loki shows up in the middle of the night with his eleven year old daughter, Hela.Hela is kind of an asshole.





	Sign

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr Prompt: "How about a single parent AU? Loki has a child and hasn't seen Thor in years?"
> 
> Rating: T

i

 

Thor wakes up to a knock at his front door at half past two in the morning. He shoots out of bed, not bothering to rub the sleep from his eyes, ignoring his racing heart. Jane had always teased him about how light of a sleeper he is. A habit he couldn’t shake since school.

He thinks it’s Fandral at his door. He already told his friends he couldn’t go out earlier—

He stops when he sees his brother there. A little girl in his arms, staring back at Thor with large, clear green eyes.

“Hey,” Loki says, all wide eyes with a bounce in his step.

Thor clenches his teeth, unclenches them again. Breathes in and out until he feels like he _won’t_ shove his brother around until he’s walking right back out into the cold and the rain and the street. Back to everything he chose when he was a sixteen-year-old punk. When he’d chosen his girlfriend over his family.

He can’t put a child out in the cold.

“I haven’t seen you for thirteen years,” Thor mutters. He wants to shout it. But he holds back, still not looking away from the bounce in his step, the bundle at his hip. Because she _is_ bundled up. Beanie, gloves, thick nice goose down ski jacket that he’s sure Loki didn’t buy, little leather boots. Her dark hair is pink at the ends, dyed in splotchy patches.

“Lucky thirteen, right?” Loki tries, smiling. It dies off in a strange way and Thor still can’t look away.

“Who is she?”

“Hela.”

Thor nods.

“The mother?”

Loki shakes his head when Hela ducks her little face under Loki’s hair. It’s longer than Thor remembers. Curlier. He’s not wearing eyeliner like he used to. His nails aren’t black. He’s wearing a wind breaker that’s soaked through over an almost translucent t-shirt that’s got holes all along the neckline. He’s got scruff and Thor stares at it, the site striking him as odd. He’s thin.

Thor sees Loki’s wearing flip flops and invites them inside.

 

 

ii

 

Thor lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the upper west side. It’s a shoebox he pays too much for, but it’s in the best part of town there is, really. It’s never been a problem for him. Now it’s an issue as he debates where to put the girl.

Hela is too big to carry. Loki sets her down as soon as they’re inside, pulling her boots off to keep by the door as she wiggles her toes into the carpet. She’s staring down at it like a dog feeling grass for the first time.

She’s too quiet and it’s freaking Thor out. The whole situation is freaking Thor out.

Loki pulls her hat off and stuffs it in her jacket pocket, raking quick fingers through her wild hair. She doesn’t smile. But she does look up to pierce Thor with a pair of eyes that used to look at him the same way when he was a little kid, and Loki even littler. Calculating, wondering, but not scared.

“She can have my bed,” he decides. Because he’s not an asshole.

Loki smiles down at Hela and Thor watches as they exchange a series of silent little blinks and nods. Some private language the two of them have, as the girl seems to understand and calmly goes to the rumpled bed that’s in plain view from where they stand.

“She has to be ten,” he says.

“Eleven,” Loki corrects him. He steps beside Thor and turns his back on the doorway where Hela has climbed under Thor’s covers and is staring out at them. “Sigyn died.”

Thor hums. So he had stayed with her. “When?”

“A year ago.”

“Why come back now?”

Loki scratches at the scruff lining his jaw, rough over his cheeks. Thor’s never seen him with a beard.

“Can we stay?”

Loki isn’t looking at him. Just staring down with eyes that look too blank to be his brother’s to focus on the bottom rusted hinge of his front door.

“How long?”

Loki doesn’t react. Doesn’t even blink. “Can we stay, Thor?”

And, if Thor was being honest, it’s the way Loki says his name that does it.

He sleeps on the couch because Loki says he’ll take the floor. Thor doesn’t argue.

 

 

iii

 

Loki is gone in the morning.

Thor doesn’t panic, because if his brother was everything he used to be, and everything he saw last night, he knows Loki won’t abandon his child.

And there’s a note in Loki’s scratchy handwriting left to greet him as soon as he looks at the coffee table.

_Work. Back at nine tonight._

_Thank you._

_Loki_

Thor almost throws it away but leaves it where it is. Doesn’t even want to touch it.

Thor checks on the girl as he rounds the corner, peeking around the doorway, suddenly hyper aware of how messy his room is. Then he feels ridiculous; she’s a child. Children don’t care.

She’s fast asleep, her hair piled on top of her head like she got overheated in the night. Thor stares and stares at her. The eyes were Loki’s. And the hair. But her skin is her mother’s. And her little nose is too.

He makes coffee and sits at his kitchen island, reading the news on his phone.

 

 

iv

 

Hela pads out in mismatched socks two hours later. It’s ten, but Thor works from home so it’s not like he has to be anywhere. She scans the living room, the little kitchen, until finally her sight lands on Thor. He waves and she blinks.

She rubs at her neck and stares at him. Does it again and frowns. Goes to his fridge and looks inside it like she’s appraising the place for a lease.

Thor lets her do it, amused and more than a little curious about the scenario he’s found himself in. She pulls out a water bottle and downs it before reaching for the butter and a loaf of bread on the counter. She makes herself buttered toast, but he steps in to scramble her some eggs too. She watches the butter sizzle in the pan and only looks away from him when the eggs are on her plate.

She eats it all fast, standing there next to him.

“You should slow down, you’re gonna burn your tongue.”

But she’s already slipping the dish and fork in the sink.

She pads off to the bathroom without a word and he sighs. The shower starts and Thor does stand by the door, listening in case she slips and falls or something. His heart races for ten minutes but when nothing happens, he figures she’s safe enough before going to fix food for himself.

 

 

v

 

Hela comes back out in the same pants and socks, but has stolen one of Thor’s shirts, and her long hair is wrapped up in a towel twist on her head. She’s swimming in his shirt but she _is_ cute, he has to admit.

She spies his television. Looks around the room for a remote and throws the peace sign at him. Does it again when he lifts an eyebrow.

“Thanks, kid.”

She narrows her eyes. She looks so much like Loki just then that Thor almost laughs.

She goes to the television and starts pushing buttons. Thor tosses her the remote when she starts looking pissed off.

Hela only calms back down when he scoots over on the single couch so she can sit. She settles back into the cushions, one arm out, lying back and staring at the news.

“You don’t want to watch that,” Thor says, reaching for the remote. But she lifts it away in the opposite direction.

Of course Loki raised a little shit, he thinks, just like he was at her age.

 

 

vi

 

Around two Thor goes to his room to get some work done on the computer. He figures the kid is doing fine with the television, he can get a few hours of work in.

He comes back out for more coffee around five and sees Hela reading. When he spies the cover his stomach drops, and he _almost_ leaps across the room to snatch it from her hands. It’s the copy of _Crime and Punishment_ he hasn’t seen since he was doing his Bachelor’s. She turns a page calmly and keeps reading.

“Hey,” he says. “I don’t think Loki would want you reading that.”

Hela doesn’t respond, doesn’t even acknowledge he’s there.

She turns another page and Thor wonders what’s next.

Hopes Loki gets back sooner than he said.

 

 

vii

 

Loki knocks on the door at exactly nine fifteen. He’s wide eyed until he sees his daughter lounging on the couch, halfway through the book she still holds diligently.

“Huh,” he says as he goes to her. Thor waits to see what happens. “You’ve read this twice before. I thought you got sick of it.”

Hela shrugs, giving Loki a peace sign before twisting her fingers around and—and Thor feels very stupid he hadn’t realized before now. Loki smiles and laughs, gives her a fist bump.

She glances back at Thor who’s standing in the kitchen, baffled.

He glowers at his brother until Loki holds his hands up, relenting. As soon as he’s in reach, Thor wraps a hand around his wrist to drag him to the bedroom. He shuts the door so they can talk.

“Twice? You let her read that?”

“She reads whatever she wants,” Loki says, eyeing him like he’s strange. “You want an explanation for all this?”

“Quick. Before she somehow gets her hands on a copy of a medical textbook or something.”

“She’s more a fan of Ovid.”

Thor tries _very_ hard not to say what he’s thinking just then. Tries harder not to do more than wind his fist in Loki’s shirt, still ripped at the neck.

“You’ve been on the streets?”

Loki’s eyes flit to the ceiling before coming back around to him.

“And she’s not in school?” Thor continues.

“No. I teach her as much as I can.”

“You dropped out at sixteen.”

“Doesn’t mean I stopped learning.”

Thor glares. “Why come back, Loki? Did you run out of food? They won’t take you at a shelter?” He means it to be cruel but it slides off Loki like water, who stands there stoic. “Why are you here?”

It hurts. Hurts to see him. Hurts to know he had a child Thor knew nothing about. Thor has a niece and he never knew.

“I can’t enroll her where I want her to go unless she has a permanent address,” Loki finally says. “I can’t teach her everything.”

“Like what?”

“Sign language. I don’t know enough to let her be successful. She needs an education,” he murmurs, and it’s sad. Sad like Thor’s never heard him. “And she needs a bed.”

“I didn’t realize,” Thor says, because he hadn’t, and he feels stupid. “Before just now, out there.” Thor shakes his head. “Loki, you have a kid.”

Loki nods. “I do.”

“And she’s kind of an asshole.”

Loki laughs quietly, tongue between his teeth. “She is.”

Thor’s hand twists in his shirt, feels an ache as he spies the flush peeking through the rips.

“When’s the last time you slept under a roof, in a bed, in decent clothes?”

“I try to set her up someplace every night. Doesn’t matter where I go, what I do, what jobs I get.”

Thor feels his eyes water. “I was a last resort, then?”

“Didn’t know how you’d treat her. Because of me,” he says in a hush. “Because of how I left things.”

Thor shakes him a little, and Loki sways, peering at him in the dark.

“Don’t be stupid. And you never gave me a chance to explain,” Thor tells him, reliving the last time he’d seen Loki. “You just kissed me and took off.”

“I fucked up. I fucked up everything. But that’s in the past now. It doesn’t matter.”

Thor shakes his head, feels his mouth twist. “Of course it still fucking matters. Then and now. It matters, Loki.”

Loki eyes him. “I don’t know what that means,” he says, cautious.

Thor doesn’t have to think about it when he says, “I wanted it too.”

The look that spreads across Loki’s face Thor can only name as an epiphany. It’s wondrous, and not even a little guarded. Thor feels like he won the argument, but doesn’t even know if they were having one.

A knock sounds on the door but Loki doesn’t move for the knob.

“We’re not done with this conversation,” Loki breathes. Thor hopes they’re not.

Thor’s the one who lets him go, reaching for the door.

Hela stands there and Thor smiles at her as best he can.

“Sorry about earlier. I thought you were raised a hippie for a minute.”

She rolls her eyes and signs something to Loki. Loki huffs and smoothes down her hair.

Thor only asks Loki what she said later, after they’ve eaten dinner. Loki’s helping him with the dishes.

“Oh,” he says. “She called you a dumbass.”

Thor snorts, starts laughing until his ribs hurt. Loki is kind enough not to mention the tears he inevitably has to pinch away at the corners of his eyes when the laughter eventually dies away.

“Loki,” he whispers, so Hela doesn’t overhear from her place at the couch. “Please stay. For as long as you want.”

Loki elbows him gently. “Wasn’t planning on leaving, Thor.”

Thor sniffs and keeps scrubbing.


End file.
